Thoughts on the
criminalization of marijuana

by

Chuck Doswell

Posted: 27 April 2003 Updated:
__

These are my personal opinions, as usual.

Let me say right away that in my past, I
have used marijuana. The context in which
this occurred is my own business, but my last use of this drug was
decades ago. I gave it up and have never relapsed into using it
again. Nor do I feel any desire to do so. Hence, the following is
not motivated by any personal wish to use
marijuana, now or in the future. In fact, as a consequence of my own
experience, I really want to discourage its
use by anyone else.

1. Introduction

At the time I was using marijuana, I was
rebelling against authority and its use right under the noses of that
authority was a way for me to pursue that rebellion. Once my
situation had changed, I found that using marijuana was inconsistent
with my life and career goals.

During this period of my life, I was a late
arrival into the "counterculture" of the 1960s. I missed most of that
experience because I was seriously involved in my education toward my
career goals. Only late in the 1960s and into the early 1970s did I
begin the use marijuana. In doing so, I realized that a lot of what I
had heard about it was bad information. I then was given new
"information" from the "potheads" of that era. Much of that
information turned out to be bad, as well.

I continued to use the drug, heavily at times,
for several years, but by the mid-1970s, I began to experience
several things: a growing fear of being "busted," a continuing
lassitude that interfered with my educational goals, and some "bad
vibes" coming from my continuing recreational use of the drug. I
decided that whatever I was getting from it wasn't worth it, and I
mostly quit. I used it at increasingly rare intervals - I don't
recall exactly when my last use was, but I think it was in the late
1970s.

2. Some selected historical
observations

While I using marijuana regularly, I began to
read about it. I discovered the "doper" version of the history of the
criminalization of marijuana, which emphasized the almost hysterical
nature of the campaign begun by Harry
Anslinger, former head of the U.S.
commission on narcotics.

Among other things, it was said then that those
who are habitual users of the drug eventually develop a delirious
rage after its administration, during which they are temporarily, at
least, irresponsible and prone to commit violent crimes.

To those of us lying about listening to our
music in a very relaxed state after smoking marijuana, the utterly
ridiculous nature of these claims struck us as hilarious. As hours
passed in near-immobility, we would chuckle to ourselves about how
violent we'd become.

At the time, I couldn't imagine how anyone
could make such patently absurd statements about marijuana users.
Only much later did I reflect on the fact that marijuana was a
poor
person's recreational drug. No complicated fermenting and distilling
needed - just strip the leaves off a common weed and smoke them. Its
use was unheard of in white, middle-class America, at least where I
grew up. Users were mostly poor Hispanics and African-Americans. I
believe the campaign against marijuana was based on lies and mostly
driven by racist fears that innocent young white kids would be
corrupted by the degenerate underclasses. Otherwise, the stridency of
Anslinger's campaign against marijuana makes no sense. Irrespective
of its logic, the campaign worked. Marijuana use and possession were
criminalized successfully in 1937 through the passage of a tax act.
Presumably, the point of this was to prevent the spread of marijuana
into the white middle class, especially youth.

Apparently, this worked for a time. As
suggested above, when I was in high school (1959-1963), the most
illicit thing we could imagine was to get a bottle of whiskey.
Smoking marijuana was something I'd never heard of, much less
imagined doing.

As noted, once I was introduced to "pot" I
began to see the lack of logic in the criminalization of marijuana.
In the youth counterculture of the 1960s, marijuana was held to be
"harmless" and its prohibition the result of our hypocritical
parents. Drugs of all kinds were (and are still) being used in
American society: "mother's little helper" (valium - I've actually
met Dr.
Sternbach, its inventor!), cigarettes (nicotine), tea and coffee
(caffeine), alcohol in many forms, diet pills (amphetamines
-"speed"), pain-killers (aspirin and acetominophin), etc., etc. Why
pick out a particular set of drugs to ban, while allowing open use of
the others? Marijuana was claimed by the counterculture to be free of
negative side effects or health risks and many comparisons were made
to the health hazards and devastation caused by both cigarettes and
alcohol. We marijuana users were simply being discriminated against.
This view prevails today in the "drug culture" - see here Whatever my personal, negative feelings about marijuana
use might be, the hypocrisy associated with the criminalization of
marijuana is still very apparent.

I also experienced first-hand the sense of
community the dopers had. It was an "us versus them" mentality, with
"us" being the "heads" and "them" being the "boozers". It was clear
to us that that being a "head" was cool, and being a "boozer" was
uncool ("If you're not "a head", you're behind!). There was this
sense of solidarity and trust associated with being part of the
counterculture. As we all eventually discovered by the end of the
1960s, this was a naïve illusion.

Remember the Steppenwolf song about "The
Pusher"? In that song, a "dealer" was someone who sold pot (the love
grass), while a pusher sold heroin, a different matter altogether.
Dealers were cool and pushers were evil in the counterculture.
However, it turned out that the logic of selling illicit drugs means
that dealers and pushers are often one and the same person!

In my naïve trust of all facets of the
drug culture, I paid $10 for a bag of dandelions from my "dealer" '
once. The dealer let me sample the stuff (but not from the bag he sold
me!), which was real marijuana. That got me stoned, and I accepted
the bag of dandelions without any further concern, until I got home
and came down from the high. It then began to dawn on me that
"dealers" were not sainted members of the counterculture. They were
simply out to make money by selling drugs (even fake drugs) to
others. This same guy had offered me harder stuff several times, but
I refused. If you decide to sell illegal drugs, why limit yourself to
marijuana? Selling drugs is a felony crime, no matter what you sell. The
so-called "hard" drugs (heroin and other morphine derivatives,
cocaine and crack, methamphetamines) are almost surely better
money-makers for drug dealers than manjuana. They involve serious
physical addiction - a nearly guaranteed customer so long as s/he
lives that will do most anything for drugs. Even in my naivete, I
could see that this was not a good thing. Drugs eventually destroyed
the potheads and "hippies" of the 1960s counterculture. They would
have killed me too, if I'd let them.

In response to the absurd anti-marijuana
campaign of Harry Anslinger, marijuana users began a campaign of
their own, intended first to debunk the misinformation propagated by
Anslinger and those who followed him. While I was using marijuana, I
tended to accept this counter-campaign rather uncritically. Today,
I'm much less inclined to accept that marijuana is "harmless" - my
own experience suggests otherwise.

3. Is marijuana harmless?

The short answer to this is virtually certain
to be "No!" Virtually anything we consume has the potential for harm,
especially when consumed in excess. To say that a psychoactive drug
like marijuana is "harmless" is to fly in the face of all logic.
Anything that affects our brain is virtually certain to have negative
side effects to an extent that might vary from one individual to
another. Any substance that is smoked is virtually certain to be
carcinogenic and bad for the respiratory system. We don't cough when
inhaling smoke for no reason - the body reacts negatively to smoke
and in order to ingest drugs by smoking them, we must force our bodies to accept
something they instinctively reject. I believe there's a lesson
there.

What about all the "myths" that have been propogated about marijuana? It might
well be the case that many of them are indeed myths. But it strikes
me as absurdly naïve to believe that using marijuana, a
psychoactive drug, is without any negative side effects. My personal
experience says that:

smoking in any form is
unhealthy,

a demotivation is indeed associated with
marijuana use,

it does tend to make one
paranoid,

it does create hazards
when doing some task that requires attention (like driving),
and

the symptoms associated with my use of the
drug ceased when I quit using it.

I'm not a medical doctor and I'm not familiar
with the medical literature on the subject, but as a scientist I know
that you can always find quotes in the scientific literature that
are, in fact, contrary to the broad consensus in the scientific
community. I don't trust the pronouncements of a "clean bill of
health" for marijuana coming from organizations
that have decriminalization as their agenda. This has the same credibility in my mind as
Anslinger's campaign of negative, exaggerated propaganda against
marijuana, or the pronouncements by the cigarette companies that
tobacco had no connection to cancer. Marijuana may be nowhere near as
dangerous as some drugs, but it almost certainly is more so than, say,
caffeine.

4. Medical uses for marijuana?

The advocates for decriminalization of
marijuana have lately been pursuing medical
uses for marijuana as a vehicle for
decriminalization. There is some evidence that marijuana is useful in
treating glaucoma, in reducing pain, and mitigating nausea during
chemotherapy treatment.

It seems to me that a lot of this is a
"smokescreen" (pun intended) for the decriminalization of marijuana,
rather than being driven by compelling reasons for
medical treatment with the drug. There may well be valid medical
uses, but it also seems to me that all of these purported medical
benefits have alternative treatments that would be as effective as
marijuana, without the high. I know of no medical use wherein
marijuana is the sole alternative, although I hardly can be said to be
familiar with the medical literature, as already noted.

To the extent that the medical profession is
willing to embrace medical uses of marijuana, I am certainly in no
position to gainsay their recommendations. However, it seems to me
that plausible medical uses for marijuana are pretty limited. If
promoting medical uses is one facet in a decriminalization effort, I
support it, but I don't believe medical uses for marijuana are
themselves important enough to be a cornerstone of the effort.

5. Did criminalization work?

In spite of the 1937 tax act that effectively
criminalized marijuana use, the use of the drug did eventually spread
deeply into white, middle-class America. In the face of stiff fines
and possible jail sentences for felony convictions, the marijuana
laws have been flouted for decades, virtually as openly as the
prohibition of alcohol was decades ago.

It is pretty clear that alcohol prohibition was a
failure, although the consumption of alcohol did in fact decline, at
least during the first years of the Prohibition era (1920-1933).
Prohibition was a case where some people felt obligated to legislate
behavior of others, primarily on a moral basis. The
consumption of alcohol - a drug that is certainly at least as dangerous as
marijuana and, arguably, has been responsible for considerably
more crime
and destroyed lives than marijuana - has a long history in white,
middle-class America and so its prohibition was doomed to eventual
failure.

Superficially, marijuana prohibition would seem
more likely to be successful than alcohol prohibition, since it was
not deeply ingrained in white, middle-class America. And yet,
marijuana prohibition has not worked. Instead, the outcome has been
indistinguishable from that of the prohibition of alcohol. Forcing
people to buy marijuana illegally has increased the cost of the drug
and has forced marijuana users into direct and continuing contact
with the illicit drug business (which I've already suggested is
basically "diversified" well beyond marijuana), thereby putting them
into circumstances promoting experimentation
with other drugs that clearly are more dangerous than
marijuana.

Advocates of maintaining felony penalties
against marijuana use continue to use some clearly fallacious
arguments:

a. The "gateway" argument

Marijuana, it is argued, is a "gateway"
drug - its use is typically the first of the illicit drugs that
someone uses. Using marijuana is simply a precursor to the
eventual use of even more dangerous drugs like heroin, cocaine, or
methamphetamines, as users seek ever greater "highs" from their
drugs.

It's my firm belief that this argument is
outright balderdash. It confuses association with cause and effect.
By similar logic, it can be argued that pickles are a "gateway" to
crime, because virtually every criminal has, at one time or another,
eaten a pickle. The absurdity of this argument is clear in the case
of connecting pickles with crime. In my experience, I had no wish to
use hard drugs and never felt any desire to move up the chain from
marijuana. But I did have many offers to do so from the dope dealers
I was forced to seek out. It wasn't hard to imagine the lure of an
even greater high.

If liquor stores also offered heroin, cocaine,
and methamphetamines, you would find that alcohol would be just as
much a "gateway" drug as marijuana.

b. The "bad message" argument

It is said that if we reduce or eliminate
the felony penalties for marijuana use, we would be "sending a
message" that we condone the use of marijuana.

The fact is that not very many marijuana users
are listening to the message that felony penalties offer. Otherwise,
marijuana use wouldn't be as widespread as it is. The severity of the
penalties for crime has never been much of a deterrent to crime. It's
well-recognized that when picking pockets was a hanging offense,
pickpockets still worked the crowd at public hangings! What we're
doing with felony penalties for marijuana use is sending a message,
all right, but it's not a message that should be sent: our
marijuana laws are grossly inappropriate. Most marijuana users are
hurting themselves at most - elminate marijuana use as a crime and
the amount of crime associated with marijuana would drop
precipitously.

c. Protecting our youth

It's said that the "message" of most
importance is to our youth. We need to make sure that our gullible
youth are not persuaded by decriminalization that marijuana is
perfectly acceptable. Hence, we need to maintain a tough stance
against its use.

Young people are constantly being thought of as
stupid and gullible. Yes, their lack of experience does make them
vulnerable, but I think we hurt our ability to communicate
effectively with young people by being patronizing and hypocritical.
We adults indulge in many drugs on a nearly daily basis: caffeine,
nicotine (one of the most addictive drugs in the pharmacopoeia),
alcohol, pain-killers, antihistamines, various prescription drugs,
etc., etc. Saying to our young people that drugs are bad is
hypocritical and contrary to our own actions. And if we exaggerate or
misrepresent the perils of illicit drugs, we lose credibility.
Treating young people as if they're stupid is counterproductive, as
well. Tough penalties on marijuana use simply alienate young people,
without convincing them that drug abuse is dangerous. It damages our
credibility in other matters, as well.

6. Why do we have a drug problem in the
U.S.?

Drug dependence, whether it's actual physical
addiction or psychological dependence, is the real source of our drug
problem, irrespective of which drug we're
discussing. Our "war" on drugs has failed because it's predicated on
the assumption that all we have to do is choke off the supply of
illegal drugs and addicts will heal themselves. It seeks to reduce
the motivation on the part of users to abuse drugs by making them
into criminals! All we're doing, in reality, with our war on drugs is
creating job vacancies in the drug business (instantly filled!) and
destroying the lives of drug users (especially, marijuana users)
needlessly. There's way too much money to be made by drug dealers
(and organized crime is an eager participant in the process) for
those vacancies to be unfilled. Of course, there's a huge vested
interest on the part of law enforcement to maintain the stiff
penalties on marijuana use - they can increase their budgets if they
can convince us of the validity of this "war". The big investments in
the "war" provide them with purpose and job security.

Even if we could somehow
win the
war on drugs, and reduce its availability to zero, we simply would
increase the abuse of legal drugs (notably,
alcohol). People use drugs for a reason, even if we don't understand
or agree upon what that reason might be. There probably are many
reasons, actually. If we deny users a particular drug, it's likely
they'll simply turn to some other drug as a substitute.

If we could eliminate abuse of alcohol without
reintroducing prohibition, we'd do ourselves a lot of good. But few
people believe that the legal producers and distributors of alcoholic
beverages are criminals - instead, we tax the production and consumption of
alcohol and prosecute only its abuses (including public
drunkeness and drunk driving). No one is suggesting we initiate a
"war" on brewers, vinyards, distillers, and alcohol distributors to
solve our alcohol problem! Everyone realizes that punishing
alcoholics for their abuse is not solving the issue of their
alcoholism.

The issues we need to address regarding
marijuana are identical to the issues associated with alcohol.
Why do some people feel such a strong
need to abuse drugs, be it alcohol or marijuana? I'm in no position to answer this, except perhaps from
a personal perspective. For young people, experimentation with drugs
(including alcohol and marijuana) is common, sometimes out of
curiosity, sometimes because it's "forbidden fruit" and therefore
interesting. Most people (young or not-so-young) don't become
alcoholics or develop psychological dependence on marijuana - but
some do.
For such people, any use of any drug is dangerous -
they just seem to be prone to "addiction." I don't know to what
extent this is genetic, a result of their upbringing, or whatever.
But it seems to me that if we want to eliminate drug abuse, we need
to understand what makes drug use so "addictive," even when true
physical addiction is not involved, and seek to develop methods based
on a proper understanding of what makes some people into drug
abusers.

For many people, alcohol and marijuana are
recreational drugs. They don't necessarily abuse them and, in the
case of alcohol, society seems willing to accept consumption in
moderation without suggesting that the users are depraved criminals..
Drug dependence is not a crime, it's a
physical and mental health
problem. Most people agree that this is
so regarding alcohol, but this recognition ought to be equally valid
for marijuana.

The use of "hard" drugs (heroin, cocaine,
methamphetamines, etc.), and serous hallucinogens (LSD, mescaline,
psilocybin, peyote, etc.), as well as "designer" drugs (PCP, halcyon,
etc.) is indisputably dangerous. These drugs
either have physically addictive properties, or are much more
directly associated with the potential for inducing self-destructive
and even violent behavior. Of course, the use of these drugs is also
basically a social and mental health problem, rather than inherently
criminal. Sadly, criminalization of the use of these drugs has also not
worked, either, although the case in favor of it is marginally better
than the case for criminalization of marijuana. We cannot expect to
win the "war" against hard drugs, either. We must develop a plan for
combating drug abuse at the level of the user, but should not make a
criminal out of the user in the process. Actions taken against
producers and distributors of illegal drugs don't work well simply
because such crime is extremely profitable. Take
one "drug kingpin" down and there are many ready to take over that
role. If we reduce the demand for the product,
the source for profits dries up and they'll seek other means to make
a profit.

7. Marijuana and crime argument

It has been said that marijuana use leads to
violence. At the very least, marijuana use is said to encourage crime
to support a drug habit.

Unlike hard drug users, there is
very little association between marijuana use and crime (ignoring
prosecutions for marijuana use, of course) - violent crime, in
particular. Even non-violent crime (robbery) to support a "marijuana
habit" is rare . Note that marijuana is not physically addictive
although it certainly can be associated with psychological dependence
and overuse.

We tolerate the pain and heartache caused by
alcohol without anyone being prosecuted as a felon for alcohol
consumption, per se. Why should someone smoking a joint have his or
her life destroyed with a felony prosecution and conviction? The
message is that we are legislatiing
morality, a notoriously dangerous thing
to do.

Lest you believe otherwise, consider that the
logical conclusion of legislating morality is a religious state, like
Iran - the consequences of this are repression and degradation of its
people. This is inconsistent with the Constitutional separation of
church and state in America, even as the religious right continues to
attack that separation. Curiously, the
religious right has more in common with Islamist extremists than with
the values that have made America the great nation that it
is. The religious right is also firmly
behind continuing to prosecute marijuana users with felony statutes.
As usual, this inconsistency doesn't deter the vigor of their
opposition to decriminalization of marijuana. I wonder to what extent
the origins of this are actually racist?

If we take away the criminal penalties for drug
use, and instead choose to regulate its use and production as we now
do with alcohol, then we can eliminate a great deal of the criminal
empire that has arisen to support illegal drug use. They may well
find other
crimes to pursue, of course.

8. So what about decriminalization?

An important lesson from alcohol prohibition
should have been learned, but apparently has not been:
criminalization of substance
abuse does not
work, and never
will. Holland is a nation that has
essentially decided to tolerate marijuana use. Marijuana and its
derivative, hashish, are sold openly and consumed openly. Having
recently
been to Holland, I'm not pleased by
what I've seen. Holland's railway stations are cesspools of drug
abuse, prostitution, and thieves. Can this be attributed solely to
their decriminalization of marijuana use? I don't think so. It seems
to me that Holland is a small country isolated by its tolerance for
marijuana consumption. It's likely that the illicit drug peddlers
have gathered there because it's a relatively safe haven for them to
ply their "trade". This has the inevitable consequences of
concentrating the evil done by drug dealers. But it's also absurd to
believe that decriminalization would, on its own, reduce the consumption of
drugs.

Efforts to decriminalize marijuana, or to
reduce the penalties for its use to misdemeanor status, are routinely
being defeated, using most of the same old arguments I've described
above. The state of Oklahoma recently defeated a measure to make
marijuana use a misdemeanor. Perhaps the nation's current oscillation
favoring the so-called "conservative" agenda of being "tough on
crime" is at least partly responsible. We continue to spend billions
fighting drug use, even as drug use continues virtually
unabated.

I repeat that I'm
not encouraging anyone to use marijuana
- in fact, I want to discourage anyone from
considering its use. But using marijuana is basically as close as we
ever get to a crime with no victims, except those whose lives have
been ruined by being tried and convicted of a what continues to be a
felony crime. Decades of this have led inevitably to dangerous
"street" drugs, enrichment of organized crime, and needless
punishment for those users who are caught. I maintain it's time we
give up the "experiment" of criminalizing marijuana, just as we had
to give up the "experiment" of alcohol prohibition. It's wasting our
financial resources, fighting a "war" we are no closer to winning
than we were in the 1930s, when the fight to prevent the spread of
marijuana use began.

Decriminalization by itself will not lead to
a reduction in drug use - that much is
pretty clear. It might well increase the consumption
of marijuana! Marijuana is not a "harmless" drug, but it's no more
problematic than alcohol, a drug that is openly used (and abused).
The resources that now go into a losing battle with drug use in the
U.S. should be redirected into studies aimed at learning how to
reduce the root causes for drug abuse. If we're to produce a real
reduction in drug abuse in the U.S. (with respect to all drugs, not just
marijuana!), the policies we as a nation pursue should be based on
information produced by careful scientific study and on techniques
that actually have been shown to work. Decriminalization of
marijuana use should be combined wtih a serious program to get at the
roots of
the problem posed by drug abuse!